Banned Book Club: Grapes of Wrath

This one intrigued me for garnering both a Pulitzer and a ban from a county less than 200 miles away.
Lots of practical insight for Peak people facing the prospect of having to bug out here--

1. Avoid debt, it can whittle your options down to the point where it feels like you don't have any. 
2. Conversely, avoid running your operation strictly to maximize profits.  You'll lose the versatility of diversified sources of resources and income and have your margins squeezed by even larger, more specialized operators.  
3. It helps to be technically savvy in whatever the transportation vehicle du jour is. 
4. Water.  Know how to find it, purify it, transport it.  Be aware of water property rights when entering new terrain (i.e. Mojave).
5. Air.  This came more from Ken Burns documentary, but it is interesting that a variety of natural disasters can jeopardize air quality and at the point when that becomes apparent, supplies of protective equipment sell out fast. 
6. Sun.  Exposure could be inevitable and durable items like hats may have more utility than consumables like sunscreen you might not be able to afford.
7. Modest procreative ambitions.  This one might not be a popular takeaway, but I was struck with how large these farm families were and how that could increase the stakes for any decision because there was always a crisis with someone they were trying to troubleshoot.
8. But conversely, a big theme of the whole book was how resilient humans were for being able to ban together and help each other, even strangers, even if it inconvenienced us and that if we abandon this instinct, things get brutal fast.  

More generic review posted here.

Book Review: Early Retirement Extreme

It started out with looking for quick, informative podcasts I could play during my vigils on The Wall (scraping paper off the upstairs rooms).  I landed on Money Girl, with its fast and upbeat episodes.  That got grating after a couple hours.  It was the same basic advice on rotation:  budget until you earn more than you spend, pay off your short term debt, max out your tax shelters (be slow to repay mortgage and tuition, fund your 401K and IRA).  From there, it's just a long habitual slog towards retirement.  Despite the lip service to frugality, every show is sponsored by someone looking to send you a new bill; even when there is no sponsor, the host is hawking her book or "financial coaching" services.  Sigh.  Where is the finance 201 course?

The best personal finance books I've read have been A Random Walk Down Wall Street and Your Money or Your Life.  Starting there, I found a lot of folks on Amazon had also purchased something called Early Retirement Extreme.

Jacob Fisker is an hardcore austerity advocate, in a similar vein to Tim Ferriss when he's out to achieve a mission in the shortest possible amount of time.  Fisker says it is possible to get yourself to "Financial Independence" within 5 years.  His main focus is on cutting back on unnecessary consumption through a combination of minimalism and DIY cross-skilling.  This could bring your yearly costs down below what others would call the poverty line.  From there, if you keep the same employment, you'd by default be saving  more than half your income which you could plow into investments and income generating initiatives which hedge inflation and perhaps offer a small real return.

I'm not quite ready to take things to The Extreme, but his points of view helped reset more ambitious goal posts-- I agree that we have an unnecessarily large house for 2 people, 2 furs, 2 scales, and 4 feathers.  If we'd wanted to buy a mobile home instead, our cost structure would be a lot lower.  But I agree with paying it off faster than 15 years because that debt structure ties you into working for a reliable income for a really long time in a pretty fixed location.  Sublets or some other income generation might be an even more lucrative way to convert square footage to income.  You'd be hard pressed to start a B&B in a trailer park.  Likewise, ditching the car exclusively for a bike does not seem like a savvy cold turkey move in Socal.  Perhaps a slightly more moderate interpretation will play out well as Fisker has only been formally "retired" for 2 years and has been making decent royalties on his self-published book in the interim.  Who knows if he will revise his position on financing if he has kids or encounters health problems in old age.

Day without MacGyver 3

One thing we have in common is that we start projects with much more alacrity than we finish them.  So I've filled the kitchen table up with yet more "inputs."  It was very windy today, so I bailed on most of the fun yard adventures I planned.

Filled the chicken coop with $11 of pine shavings which turned the tables for beleaguered 2.0.  She had lost some head feathers and looked a little raw, but seemed to be in pretty good spirits.  She has figured out how to use sympathetic Inky as a feathered shield between her and Blinky when things get dodgy.  With shavings spread, there was nowhere our dirt loving birds thought was safe to stand, but 2.0 had made herself at home in the deepest bedded corner.

On the same errand I also discovered Zuke's dog treats make a Chondroitin and Glucosamine supplement treat which I've started feeding to Kai in hopes her luxating patella won't er... luxate so much.  Two treats in, they come stampeding to the kitchen from anywhere on the property any time I move the treat bag to accommodate other inputs .

I was really craving shahi paneer which tops my list of comfort foods.  The problem with Indian Buffet paneer is that either they're chintzy with the cheese or someone fishes it all out before you get there.  So I might have tripled the amount of paneer called for to ensure an awesome lunch and 2 more for work (thank goodness for wide-mouthed canning jars).

I also rendered giant beet into something called Odessa Salad which I found in the Moosewood Cookbook (the only other option was Borcht of which I was only familiar with due to childhood viewing of Rugrats).  You basically bake the beet in foil for 45 mins at 400 degrees.  Let it cool.  Shred it.  Mix it in with chopped prunes, pineapple, walnuts, garlic, and a couple tablespoons of lemon juice.  The bit I grazed tasted pretty decent.

While waiting, I made some lip balm because I seem to have misplaced or dryer-melted every tube of chapstick in the house.  This was a recipe from a book BroEpic gave me for festivus.  5 tb castor oil (was using more for softer consistency), 1 tb beeswax, 2 tb honey melted in mom's mini-crockpot and finished with about 20 drops of peppermint essential oil.  I deliberated dumping some of my favorite/only lipstick (blood red Nars Fire Down Below) in for tinting, but figured if this became a communal pot, that particular shade wouldn't look so swell on MacG.  Incidentally, just applying castor oil is good for temporary ultra glossy lips.  One concern:  the oil is lighter than honey and didn't seem to fully blend.  Guess we'll find out how things turned out when it's chilled out.

I had also been allowing 5 liter "Schmidt" to ferment some seriously shredded cabbage for an indeterminately long time.  So long that I forgot that I had seasoned the kraut with hot pepper flakes for some extra kick.  Instead, I became convinced Schmidt was harboring some weird red acidophilic  bacteria and that the mortician would have to retrieve me from the house in a hazmat suit.  Schmidt and I avoided eye contact for several additional weeks after I began harboring this suspicion.  In actuality, the kraut I grazed while cramming the remainder into a not-wide-mouthed mason jar (grr)  tasted pretty decent.  I suppose we'll draw our own conclusions about whether the hazmat suits are necessary if this becomes my final blog post.  In the future, I probably won't let the food processor shred kraut cabbage.  It was a pain to fish all those tiny pieces out.  As a very tangential aside, I am saddened that the Munich Marathon no longer overlaps with the commencement of Oktoberfest because I was really looking forward to that dubious combination at some point in my life.

I also finished my book club read, Terry Pratchett's The Color of Magic, which I only just now realized I could have watched as a mini-series on Amazon Prime for $4 and had all but 3 hours of my life back.  Although in fairness, it was a pretty amusing read.  A bit too far into the "absurd events coming full circle" Douglas Adams style of plot line for me to relish embarking on a whole series in this vein.  I guess I'm more of a non-fiction gal.  

What's still on the table-- a pie tin because our Hallows pumpkin has been hanging around for quite some time and I learned the hard way that I can't just blithely compost him.  Faux nutella to eventually go with the San Francisco sourdough starter I picked up (but am dubious I can cultivate at stably warm temperatures at present...  maybe in a carefully rigged crockpot...).